For anybody who’s been following all-holiday programming through its evolution over the last decade, only the actual numbers themselves might be surprising. In a recent Conclave Webinar featuring Nielsen BDSRadio’s Andrew Forsyth about AC Christmas programming in the top five markets, average playlist size was down last year (752 titles to 694), 120 titles accounted for 70% of airplay, and powers spun around five times a day.

So doing a First (or Fresh) Listen to a Holiday-formatted station becomes mostly about what’s between the records, with perhaps the secondary quirks of which version of the standards you hear first, and whether you get any break from the most traditional holiday music that has now become the center lane for North Pole traffic.

Soft AC WEZW (Easy 93.1) Atlantic City, N.J., got national attention (including the New York Daily News) for switching on Oct. 18; its fourth year of switching in October. (Or as the Countdown Clock on the station’s Website would have put it, 67 days before Christmas.) A few days later, AccuRadio announced its holiday channels, while the U.K.’s Smooth Radio also announced the first national holiday channel, which will debut on Nov. 1.

Holiday stations that switch in mid-October are by now cognizant of the potential for cheap yucks in declaring, “Without a doubt, this is the best time of the year.” (You bet it is! The trick-or-treating. The crunching leaves. The Friday night lights.) The only thing you can do is proceed with alacrity, and in terms of creating an atmosphere around the records, the proper emotional connection and follow-through certainly comes through here.

WEZW’s Website also directs listeners to an on-line holiday music test, as well as its Facebook page, which contains comments like, “This is awesome. I live in Macon, Georgia” and “Thank you for the non-stop Christmas music! Hell yes!”

Here’s WEZW just before 9 a.m. on Oct. 20:

Kelly Clarkson, “My Grown Up Christmas List”
Martina McBride, “Do You Hear What I Hear”
Gloria Estefan, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow”
Bing Crosby, “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas”
Andy Williams, “The First Noel”
Eartha Kitt, “Santa Baby”
Mariah Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
Elmo & Patsy, “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”
Jackson 5, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
Burl Ives, “A Holy Jolly Christmas”
Vanessa Williams, “Silver And Gold”
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve – Sarajevo 12/24”
Amy Grant, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”
Paul McCartney, “Wonderful Christmastime”